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Top Gun director Tony Scott dies after jumping from bridge

Hollywood film director Tony Scott has died after jumping from a bridge in Los Angeles, the city's coroner said on Sunday. British-born Scott was best known for directing the blockbusters Top Gun and Crimson Tide.

REUTERS - British-born filmmaker Tony Scott, director of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Top Gun” and “Crimson Tide,” jumped to his death on Sunday from a bridge over Los Angeles Harbor, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said.

Onlookers saw Scott, who was 68, parking his car on the Vincent Thomas Bridge and leaping into the water below at about 12:30 p.m. local time (1930 GMT), according to Lieutenant Joe Bale, a watch commander for the coroner’s office.

Bale said the body was recovered by law enforcement from the harbor shortly before 3 p.m. and was subsequently identified as being that of the filmmaker and younger brother of movie director Ridley Scott.

Bale said there was no immediate evidence leading investigators to believe that Scott’s death was anything but a suicide. He said an autopsy had not yet been performed.

The Torrance Daily Breeze newspaper, citing a U.S. Coast Guard official, reported in an online story that a suicide note was found inside Scott’s car, which was parked on the cable-suspension bridge.

The bridge, the surface of which clears the harbor’s navigation channel by a height of about 185 feet (56 meters), connects the port district of San Pedro at the southern tip of Los Angeles to Terminal Island in the harbor.

Scott, born in North Shields, Northumberland, in England, and frequently seen behind the camera in his signature faded red baseball cap, is credited with directing more than two dozen movies and television shows and producing nearly 50 titles.

He was best known for his work on the 1986 fighter jet adventure “Top Gun,” which starred Tom Cruise as a hot-shot pilot, and “Crimson Tide,” the 1995 submarine thriller whose cast included Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman.

His directing credits also include the Eddie Murphy comedy “Beverly Hills Cop II,” the racing drama “Days of Thunder,” which also featured Cruise, and the runaway train blockbuster, “Unstoppable, which also starred Washington.